


and I run from wolves tearing into me without teeth

by partialconstellations



Series: you run in my veins [1]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst and Porn, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Theon-centric, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-17
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-21 17:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18145232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/partialconstellations/pseuds/partialconstellations
Summary: It’s a long time before he allows himself to remember again. When he does, Sansa is there. She takes care of him; sometimes, he almost forgets that he used to be Reek. He clings to her at night, and she doesn’t correct him when he calls her Robb.





	and I run from wolves tearing into me without teeth

Snow is the first Theon turns to.

Robb is too good for him; he is too kind, has always been too fucking nice to him since the day he arrived at Winterfell, a scared boy that lashed out every way he could. The way the sun reflects in his auburn curly hair the same way it does in the summer snows reminds him too much of the sea, and his easy, open smile is a ray of sunshine that burns itself into the back of his mind.

Sansa is little more than the abstract idea that he might marry her someday, if he doesn’t lose his head first. (In truth, he knows that she is too good a match for him, the hostage, heir to little more than a bunch of rocks with troublesome people on them, while she is fit to be a queen, a true queen, but he dreams only to belong.) And she is too young.

But Snow with his sullen looks, his bloody curls and his full mouth, perfect for sucking cock, the way he takes himself and everything else too seriously. Snow, he can deal with. It’s not hard to wind him up enough, after all.

And so it starts, almost carefully, at least by their questionable standards. Theon fucks Snow into the mattress the first time, marking him in every place he can reach, but soon enough, Snow takes him and calls him names, and Theon would never admit it out loud, but he likes it. Gods, does he like it, to be taken. His mind goes blank and there is nothing but the release after.

It’s almost a relief when Snow leaves for the Wall. They’ve become less and less careful with time, Theon dropping to his knees in little-used corridors and Snow taking him in the stables – it’s only a matter of time before they’d get caught and Lord Stark might show leniency to the hostage fucking his bastard, but Theon _really_ doesn’t want to end up on the Wall. Better Snow up there in that blistering cold than him.

He starts going to Ros regularly again and he takes her from behind more often than not, pretending she’s another redhead. She gives him more backtalk than he imagines Robb would and she’s too slick, so he starts taking her as he did Snow and what he really wants is to be taken as Snow took him but he can’t bring himself to ask her to fuck _him_. He tries his hardest to pretend it’s enough. It’s not.

All the while he’s watching Robb struggle to adjust to his new role as acting Lord of Winterfell and he seems more out of reach than ever before.

 

* * *

 

Robb comes to him after the Whispering Wood, the knowledge and the guilt that he sent two thousand Northmen to their deaths writ clear on his face. His eyes are wild as they look at him, and his look reminds him of what they say, that he is more wolf than man. At this moment, Theon can almost believe them. Robb has been hardened, he’s not the boy he was. His new role doesn’t suit him.

Robb clings to him, and who is he to deny him? He’s always wanted Robb. When Robb kisses him, it’s not how Theon imagined it, it isn’t gentle and careful, it’s full of hunger and desperation.

Robb takes him bent over the table, too rough. It’s clear Robb hasn’t done this before and while he tries to take care not to hurt Theon, there isn’t enough oil and they’re rushing too much. The table’s edge bites, Robb’s fingers are clumsy and his grip is tight on his hips, tight enough to bruise. Robb finishes quickly, he spends inside Theon with a grunt, before he has even touched Theon’s cock. He makes a half-hearted grab for it, but Theon bats his hand away and finishes himself.

It’s all wrong. This isn’t how the Robb of his youth would have done it, the way he imagined it when he touched himself, but this is the King in the North, not his friend. This is what war has made of a kind boy.

They don’t kiss or talk after, and Theon leaves. As he looks back, Robb is sitting at the edge of his cot, head buried in his hands. He wants to comfort him, but he doesn’t have the words.

The morning after, Theon leaves for the Iron Islands. He can’t bear to see the look in Robb’s eyes. Those cornflower eyes, which used to be full of sunshine and warmth and smiles, are unseeing and clouded, full of doubt and guilt, at what he has done to Theon. Theon wants to yell at him that it’s fine, he hasn’t hurt him, he’s wanted this since forever, since before he’s pretended Snow’s black curls were auburn, since before Snow buried himself in his arse, but what comes out is the suggestion of an alliance with his father.

And then, of course, everything goes horribly wrong.

 

* * *

  

It’s a long time before he allows himself to remember again. When he does, Sansa is there.

Sansa, who bears so many scars now, inside and out, is gentle and tender. Far too kind for what he deserves. She takes care of him; sometimes, he almost forgets that he used to be Reek. He clings to her at night, and she doesn’t correct him when he calls her Robb. They curl in on each other, give each other comfort when they travel north, to the Wall, to Jon.

He expects Snow to take his head, for everything he’s done, and he would welcome the blade at his neck. He would see Robb again, if he didn’t believe he himself would go to the deepest of the seven hells. Robb isn’t; Robb is in a good place, where good people go. But welcome the blade, he would nonetheless, if only for his suffering to end. Instead, Sansa steps in front of him, and tells Snow that Theon has suffered enough. Her eyes are steel. Theon wants to scream at her.

 

* * *

 

They have left Castle Black far behind them when Theon goes to Snow again, grabs at him with shaking hands, tears at his clothes, and Snow crashes their mouths together. He touches him differently, the way Theon would touch a woman and for just a moment wonders what Snow has been up to, what _his_ demons are. Snow’s hand goes to where Theon’s cock had been and Theon catches his hand, redirecting it to his arse, into his breeches.

Snow snorts against his lips but complies, squeezing his arse, and drives the fingers of his other hand into Theon’s mouth, telling him they don’t have any oil, so he better get to it.

“Robb,” Theon moans involuntarily around Snow’s calloused fingers in his mouth and Snow stops, withdraws and doesn’t touch him again. Not this night, and not the ones after. Sansa doesn’t protest when Theon returns to her bedside. She doesn’t ask any questions and lets him touch her and lets him call her Robb.

Sometimes, Snow looks at him, as if he’s wondering if it’s always been about Robb, when they had been together. Theon wants to tell him it wasn’t, but he has lied enough. It’s always been Robb.

 

* * *

 

But Robb is gone and Theon is never more aware of that than when he touches Sansa’s red hair, lighter than Robb’s, breathes in her scent, dried flowers when he always thinks of Robb as cinnamon. (He was not, they both stank to the high heavens in the night they spent together.) He remembers, as he drives what is left of his fingers into her wet cunt and makes her gasp and moan and shiver and when her walls restrict around him, it’s almost close enough.

Sometimes, he can’t forget – no, never that – but he can stop imagining the way Robb would have moved and kissed and licked and fucked, just for a while, if only circumstances had been different. He can never stop remembering the way Robb smiled at him, open and almost carefree before the war began, before he became a king, troubled and withdrawn after.

He hates himself, always, when they are done, when Sansa puts her clothes back on and looks at him with pity, with eyes the same cornflower blue as Robb’s – she looks too much like Robb – but never enough to stop. Sansa doesn’t hate him enough to stop either – or maybe it’s the opposite? It’s so hard to tell with her these days.

And so they continue their dance and he wonders what she gets out of it, especially when Snow finds out and looks like bloody murder again. Snow shoves him against a wall when he leaves Sansa’s chambers after they’re done. Has he been waiting for them to finish or is this really a coincidence?

“If you hurt her, it’s the last thing you do, Greyjoy,” he spits at him, arm constricting his throat.

Snow starts looking more and more like his father with each passing day, the same way that Sansa looks like Robb, and he wishes that either of them had any of Robb’s temperament. But they don’t. Sansa has been hardened in a way that Robb never had, not even in war. She’s the ruler Robb never would have been able to be, able to make the tough decisions without letting them break her. Sansa has been honed into a fine edge by everything that’s happened to her. Robb had been broken beyond repair by war even before Theon’s betrayal.

Theon struggles against Snow’s hold for a moment and then lets himself go slack in his grip. “I won’t. I’m not able to, even if I wanted to.” Snow lets go, reluctantly, but he’s still too close, too much in his space. It’s taking every bit of self-control he has to not start shaking like a leaf, become Reek again. “She’s far stronger than either of us,” he adds.

Snow looks at him, and Theon looks at that pouty mouth of his and remembers a time when he had done unspeakable things to it, to him, and let him do even more unspeakable things to him in turn. “Isn’t that the truth.” His voice is low and rough, but he lets Theon go.

Sansa’s door opens and she steps into the corridor, Ghost on her heels. She takes a single look at them both, the way they are still standing too close to each other, and sighs. “Leave it, Jon. We all deal with our ghosts differently.”

Ghost nudges Theon’s hand with his snout, and he absentmindedly curls it into his fur, and then he remembers it’s the one that’s been inside Sansa not too long ago and drowned fuck, the beast has been in the room adjacent to them the entire time, hasn’t he.

Snow looks at the wolf like he’s personally betrayed him. “You don’t know what he’s been doing. What we’ve been doing,” he admits and again, he glares at Theon, as if Snow hadn’t been an enthusiastic participant in what they’d been doing, a thousand years ago. Before Robb.

“I know what it is,” Sansa says, her voice hard, eyes darting between them. “Nobody here has any illusions about what they get. If one thing in life is true then it’s that none of us get what we want. Leave him alone, Jon,” she repeats before she stalks past them, a woman who has neither the time nor the patience for squabbles. Ghost stays, still at Theon’s side, letting him pet him.

Snow and Theon exchange a look after she’s gone. Snow opens his mouth, then he looks at Ghost, so obviously content at Theon’s side, closes it, and leaves. Ghost doesn’t leave Theon’s side until Sansa comes to him that night. She’s never come to him, only Robb has ever come to him, that one night, it’s always been him who went to her, or Snow, to seek whatever it is he’s been looking for.

“I can’t give you what you want,” Sansa says, as she sits down at the edge of his bed with a determined look on her face, “but maybe we can pretend.” She motions for him to step closer and he obeys, can’t help but do what she says, he likes being given direction, always has. He reaches for her, for her hair, but she shakes her head. He withdraws his hands. “Do you have oil?” she asks, her voice quiet, but firm. It’s the voice she uses when she doesn’t want anyone to disagree with her.

He nods and gets it from his bedside drawer. The jar is half-empty, he’s fucked himself on his fingers more times than he can recall. Sansa coats her fingers as he tugs his breeches down and she doesn’t flinch the way he always expects her to when she looks at him; she’s seen him, the way he is now. She doesn’t want or need his cock, he’s always fucked her with his fingers and his mouth, but not this time. This time, she reaches around him and when her slender fingers enter him, his knees buckle. But he forces himself to remain standing, so he can look down at her and pretend it’s Robb doing this to him.

It’s not perfect, her hair is too light and too long and it doesn’t curl enough, but if he doesn’t look too closely, he can pretend. She’s gentle, the way Robb would have been if they’d done this when they were still boys at Winterfell, not the broken king and his childhood friend they had been that one time they’d been together.

When he climaxes, he takes her face in his hands, caresses her cheek as softly as he can and then he tilts her head up and looks into Robb’s cornflower eyes, and maybe, just maybe, he smells cinnamon.

“Thank you,” he breathes as he kisses her. He doesn’t call her Robb this time.

**Author's Note:**

> I know the timeline doesn't add up for either the show or the books but work with me here.
> 
> Title from [Wolves Without Teeth](https://youtu.be/VAI5GSyXMjA) by Of Monsters and Men.  
> Kudos, comments and constructive criticism are always appreciated.


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